


Line Up, Fall In

by lynndyre



Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:39:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/pseuds/lynndyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifteen years after the game: Aurnion's Harvest Festival, a lunar eclipse, and two best friends who never entirely grow up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Line Up, Fall In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pengiesama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pengiesama/gifts).



The crowd noise swelled around them, but the only voice Flynn could concentrate on was Yuri's. He grabbed for Yuri's hand, felt his own wrist caught, and they stumbled out of the ring together, pushing between drunken soldiers and drunken guild members alike. Behind them in the spotlight, Karol was calling out the next contest of the night, his deep voice carrying easily over everything else.

Flynn scrubbed blood and dirt from his face with the hem of his shirt, his uniform stowed somewhere with the rest of his pack. Someone waved a cup in front of him, but Flynn ducked sideways and followed the pull of Yuri's hand to the shadows of the far buildings, where Raven and a very out-of-uniform Leblanc slept the sleep of the happily inebriated, curled around a flask. The flask was immediately appropriated for the purpose of slaking Yuri's thirst. Flynn laughed, in between trying to find his breath. "One of these days I'll make you learn your own first aid spells."

"Never happen." Yuri wiped his mouth with his sleeve, panting, and Flynn tipped the flask down his own throat. Wine, probably Dahngrest - he'd have to make sure he found some more of this year's Aurnion mead and make Yuri try it.

"Alright, hold still - What are you sniggering at now?"

"You- your casting stance looks a hell of a lot less impressive when you're doing it with booze."

Yuri only laughed harder as Flynn drew himself to his full height and raised the flask above his head. "Holy power, come!" The spirits evidently decided that alcohol was an acceptable weapon substitute under the circumstances, and Flynn took another drink with no little personal satisfaction.

Raven muttered something about canaries and rolled over, and Flynn tucked the bottle back under his arm. He snuggled it closer, faceplanted into Leblanc's stomach, and started snoring again.

"Come on, we have to go see the moon."

"Sure you're not just seeing stars?"

Flynn slung his arm over Yuri's neck and ground his knuckles into Yuri's hair. "I'll give you stars."

Out past the impromptu coliseum were the harvest bonfires - one large flanked by two small - the dancing, and the food. The fifteenth anniversary of Aurnion's founding was better than Flynn had imagined. Something about this city kept it insulated from the tensions of the rest of the world. Instead of losing resources and infrastructure with the transformation of the world's blastia cores, Aurnion had simply built itself from the ground up, and it still kept that spirit, whatever resentments might exist elsewhere.

Deep burgundy hair shone in the firelight, streaming out behind Fortune's Market's guild leader as she spun out from Harry's hands and caught Sodia's. Flynn watched them turn together against the dancing shadows before the music passed each of them along the circle. He wasn't the only one who loved this place. Needed it.

He turned back to Yuri, needing to say something, even if he didn't know how to share the thought. Yuri's eyes caught the flickers of the bonfires, and in the end Flynn tugged him in close enough to kiss. Someone cheered, and Flynn could distinctly feel the rude gesture Yuri was making behind his back. He grinned against Yuri's mouth.

"Race you."

Flynn made a break for the fields, Yuri taking a swipe after him, then they were running flat out in the dark with the bonfires behind them. Without his armour, Flynn could practically fly. He never realized how heavy it was until he took it off, but like this, he could just let his feet keep finding the ground. The hill was harder, slippery in the dark when you couldn't see the ground, but he kept his lead despite two rabbit holes, a stone, and a half-buried stump that his shinbone would not be thanking him for.

Flynn let himself fall back onto the grass, and felt Yuri land beside him. He lay with his eyes closed at first, getting his breath back, feeling the bruises he'd have by morning. It was a good awareness. All of him awake and alive to the fullest extent of his body's strength.

The cool of the grass leached up through the back of his shirt, colder than the air. He could feel the heat of Yuri's body, even without touching. He licked his lips, wine and salt sweat and copper where Yuri's fist had caught him across the mouth. The air he sucked into his lungs tasted of cut wheat and smoke as much as it did of forest or dirt.

Above them the full moon was reduced to a crescent, shadow creeping across its face to shroud it in rust. It made the stars look strange, no longer part of the sky, but suspended from it as if on invisible threads. The eclipse must have begun while they were still in the city itself. The clouds were few, but moving fast, chasing across Vesperia.

"That one looks like a dragon, or an Entelexia. With a pipe."

"...Or a dog."

Flynn stretched out his hand and pulled Yuri in against his shoulder, so his nose was full of Yuri's hair. It smelled dusty, but underneath that impossibly familiar. "Yeah."

Yuri shifted, settled again, with Flynn's biceps as his new pillow."I bet there are all kinds of things for him to hunt up there."

Flynn watched the stem of the pipe cloud stretch its way under the rusty moon, and suddenly couldn't keep from laughing. "It must be so much easier to mark the whole world as his territory now. Maybe we should be careful about standing in the rain."

Yuri thumped him for that one, but he could still hear the snort that Yuri buried in his shirt. "He'd love that. No more sailing to remote islands in the back of nowhere and waiting for him to piss on every second bush."

Even here beyond the fields the lights of Aurnion were a glow over that whole edge of the horizon, but the night stretched out in every other direction. Night birds called from the far forest, and Flynn's head felt empty even while his breast was overflowing. Everything felt bigger than he could contain, and it was good to be part of the world again instead of always trying to keep it on track.

"How does Estelle find the right words? There never seems any way to say things, sometimes."  
"We manage." Yuri rolled over, slid his hand down Flynn's chest to cup below his belt. "What do you think, all your feelings still in your sword?"

Flynn snorted, but pushed up into Yuri's hand. He tugged until Yuri consented to drape across him, legs scissored, warm and hard against his hip. Flynn thrust, slow, and Yuri groaned next to his ear, breath warm on Flynn's face. Sun behind the earth, behind Flynn, and the moon in front of them - they were in line with everything in the universe. Flynn wrapped both arms around Yuri's body, tilted his head back, and let himself _move_.


End file.
